Generation of Animation Views for Petri Nets in GenGED

Abstract

Formal specification techniques like Petri nets allow for the formal description and analysis of systems. Tool support exists for many different Petri net classes for editing, simulating and analyzing formal models. A domain-specific animation of net behavior going beyond the well-known token game, however, is not yet supported in most cases. In this paper, we present a formal approach for the generic specification of animation views for different Petri net classes based on GenGED and graph transformation. The GenGED approach, developed at the TU Berlin, allows for the generic description of visual modeling languages including different Petri net classes. In our framework, the animation view of a system modeled as a Petri net consists of a domain-specific visual layout and an animation view according to the firing behavior of the Petri net class. The basic idea is to generate visual animation rules based on visual syntax rules defining the corresponding Petri net language. We propose a view transformation from the classical Petri net layout to the animation layout. The well-known producer/consumer system modeled as an elementary Petri net serves as running example. We provide an animation view for the application domain kitchen where producing and consuming is visualized by icons for baking and eating cakes, respectively.